


on the road again

by cygnes



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Car Accidents, Gen, Mild Gore, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3946117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conductor picks up a hitchhiker.</p>
<p>No, wait: a ghost gets into an unfamiliar car.</p>
<p>No, wait…</p>
            </blockquote>





	on the road again

**Author's Note:**

> Did someone say _hitchhiking ghost AU_ vignette? Oh, no one said that? Too damn bad. Terence Fletcher and Andrew Neiman have a discussion under decidedly strange circumstances.
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/118657560380/fic-on-the-road-again) on tumblr.
> 
> Warning for talk of car accidents and death and abuse, slurs/profanity (surprising no one), plus brief gore.

Terence Fletcher hates driving at night.

There’s a young man standing by the side of the road. He’s wearing a plain black suit. Fletcher keeps driving. About two miles on, he drives past the same young man. He doesn’t stop this time, either. It’s about eleven o’clock at night. He wants to get home, wants to pour himself a stiff drink and not think about personal or professional failures for a little while. He wants to ignore the implications of the figure by the roadside.

Another half-mile, and that same goddamned idiot is standing in the middle of the road. Fletcher swerves, slams on the breaks, curses at the top of his lungs and pounds the horn with the palm of his hand. It can’t be the same person in the road. Logically, he knows this. He’s driving faster than anyone could run (faster than the law allows). But he’s sure it is.

The young man doesn’t look up until the car skids to a full stop, at which point he walks slowly over to the driver’s side window and knocks on it. Common time, one-two-three-four.

“Can I get a ride?” he says. Fletcher leans over to the passenger side door and unlocks it. There doesn’t seem to be any other option. “My name’s Andrew,” his passenger says as he climbs in. Andrew buckles his seatbelt, looking up at Fletcher before dodging his glance. “Sorry about this. I’m a little lost.”

“Where are you headed?” Fletcher says. Andrew frowns, considering.

“You know, I’m not sure.”

“Well, you better figure it out before we get to my place, because you’re not staying over. I don’t care what your story is.” Andrew stares forward through the windshield. He doesn’t offer a story.

“I think… I think I need to get to a concert,” he says after several minutes of silence. Not full silence: road noise, the sound of breathing, the jittery tap of fingers against the door.

“Yeah?” Fletcher hears himself saying.

“Or--a performance? I’m supposed to be playing somewhere.” Andrew looks over again, and in his peripheral vision, Fletcher can see him flinch away at the mere sight of him. “I’m going to be late.”

“It is pretty fucking late,” Fletcher agrees. “Must be at a club. Manhattan?” They’re in Westchester.

“Jersey,” Andrew says without hesitation. He seems surprised that he can answer so easily.

“That’s a little out of my way,” Fletcher says. “And I’m not going to chauffeur you to wherever-the-fuck in the middle of the night. So you’ll have to find your own way there.”

“Do you think I should take a bus?” Andrew says. There’s something vicious there--something venomous. Fletcher slows, pulling to the side of the road, and stops. He doesn’t look over to the passenger seat, which is empty even though the seatbelt is buckled. He takes a deep breath and rests his head on the steering wheel.

* * *

The first time was the worst. The first time, Andrew appeared in his passenger seat without warning, bloody and trembling all over and gasping. Half his skull was still caved in. There was a shard of bone poking out of his index finger. He looked the same way he had when Fletcher had identified his body.

Fletcher almost crashed his car the first time. Which, in retrospect, might have been the point.

* * *

He didn’t find out about Andrew until after the performance at Dunellen. Ryan Connolly played competently, didn’t fuck up anyone else’s groove, and that was good enough. Shaffer’s studio band conquered the festival, surprising no one.

“Too much of a fucking pussy to even show back up,” Fletcher sneered within earshot of Connolly and Tanner. “Christ, I don’t know what I saw in him.” He regretted saying this within the hour and would regret it more in months to come.

He was a half hour out, heading back up to New York, when he got the call. State police, calling from Saint Peter’s University Hospital. _Did he know an Andrew Neiman?_ Yes. _What was his relationship to Mr. Neiman?_ Andrew was his student; hadn’t shown up at a performance today.

“Did he get himself into some kind of trouble? Because I’m not bailing him out. I’m not his father.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “His father has been contacted,” the officer said finally. “But we’d like to get the body formally identified as soon as possible.”

He thought about saying no. In the end, he turned his car around. He confirmed that the body in the morgue was Andrew Neiman, age nineteen, student at Shaffer conservatory. Jazz drummer, he’d added, though they didn’t need that information. Andrew’s hands were in bad shape--but nothing irreparable, Fletcher thought distantly. He could be playing again in a few months. If not for that inconvenient fucking traumatic head injury. 

He found out later that Andrew had been speeding, and on speed. He found out because it was brought up before the board during his hearing.

“He made his own choices,” Fletcher insisted. “I didn’t tell him to get high. I didn’t tell him to run a red light in front of an eighteen wheeler.”

Two student deaths in the span of one semester looked bad, though, even if Sean Casey hadn’t been his student for years. He’d gotten a special mention in the bastard’s suicide note. The sticks in Andrew’s car seemed to say much the same thing. Shaffer tossed Fletcher to the curb and from a PR perspective he couldn’t blame them. He thought they were idiots, thought that in a couple of years when studio band had gone to shit he might get a call.

For now, he takes what work he can get. It’s all over the place, which means a lot of driving. And Terence Fletcher has since learned to hate driving at night. 

* * *

The first time, Andrew said nothing. He made wet gasping sounds. 

The second time, his clothes were bloody but his head was whole. His hands shook but he could still keep time rapping against the window. Common time, compound triple time. He knew that his name was Andrew. That seemed to be all he knew.

And now, well. He doesn’t remember Dunellen specifically but he’s in the right neighborhood. He knows he was supposed to be at a performance. He knows he’s afraid of Fletcher. And, Fletcher thinks, Andrew’s beginning to remember that he hates him. 

One of these nights he’s not going to make it home. One of these nights he’s going to stop the car the first time and talk to a young man who knows him but doesn’t have reason to fear him anymore. One of these nights he’s going to have to come up with a better answer than ‘you made your own choices.’ Blood shed for him demands blood in return. 

Or maybe he’ll start taking public transport.


End file.
